Joe Stack's daughter: Dad was a "hero...now maybe people will listen"

[Amerigo Vespucci]

Monday, Feb 22, 2010 09:22 EST
Daughter says pilot in Texas IRS crash was a hero
Samantha Bell admits her father's suicidal crash, which killed an IRS employee, was ''inappropriate"
By Associated Press

The daughter of a man who crashed his small plane into an Internal Revenue Service building called her father a hero for his anti-government views but said his actions, which killed a tax service employee, were "inappropriate."

Joe Stack's adult daughter, Samantha Bell, spoke to ABC's "Good Morning America" from her home in Norway. Asked during a phone interview broadcast Monday if she considered her father a hero, she said: "Yes. Because now maybe people will listen."

Authorities say Stack, 53, targeted the IRS office building in Austin last week, killing employee Vernon Hunter and himself, after posting a ranting manifesto against the agency and the government. He apparently set fire to his home before flying his plane into the office building.

Hunter's son, Ken Hunter, said he's alarmed by comments that called the pilot a hero.

"How can you call someone a hero who after he burns down his house, he gets into his plane ... and flies it into a building to kill people?" Hunter told ABC." "My dad Vernon did two tours of duty in Vietnam. My dad's a hero."

http://www.salon.com/news/joe_stack/index.html?story=/news/2010/02/22/us_plane_crash_pilot_1

[no_hypocrisy]

1. Wish I could unrecommend a "0".

There's familial fidelity and then there's stupidity.

[Zoeisright]

2. Murder is 'inappropriate'???

Guess the nut didn't fall far from THAT tree.

[Jeff In Milwaukee]

14. Yes. Like using the wrong fork at a formal dinner...

:sarcasm:

[Don Caballero]

3. What a sicko

Her Dad was a terrorist not a hero. I hope this woman is being monitored very closely.

[BlueMTexpat]

4. Wow ... my finger slipped and I hit "recommend" ... sorry about that!

Her father is a murderer. Not. A. Hero.

EOM.

[hlthe2b]

5. Safely ensconced in "socialist" Norway....

I wonder what her "hosts" (or newly claimed homeland) would think of this...

[Blue_Tires]

15. that stuck out to me, too

[Barack_America]

6. "Hero"? Is that what they're calling murderers these days?

Interesting.

[no_hypocrisy]

11. Semantics. One man's terrorist is another man's revolutionary.

The quote was originally used by Walter Laqueur in the introductor chapter of his book, Age of Terrorism.

But to reiterate my original post, stupidity. Abject stupidity.

[opihimoimoi]

7. The man was sick....our society failed him...woulda coulda shoulda recieved help. what he did made

him a Zero

[2Design]

8. brainwashing starts young by all kinds of people nt/

[Jeff In Milwaukee]

9. Apparently it didn't skip a generation....

She's as batshit crazy as he was. Stay in Norway, OK?

[katandmoon]

10. This is how low the media have sunk.

[951-Riverside]

13. Communist China would never allow this on TV

Maybe we should follow their lead.

[tom_paine]

20. Our M$M IS Communist China Media, with Celebrity News & Lifestyle Features

:puke:

[katandmoon]

31. Thank you.

[hamsterjill]

12. I saw the building

We were in Austin over the weekend attending an event and we drove past that building. The pictures do not do the real damage justice.

This man was NO hero, and it is amazing to me with the extent of the damage that more people did not lose their lives.

Kudos to the Austin emergency responders!

[jobycom]

25. Yeah, I pass it a few times every day. The emergency responders were lucky.

There was a monthly meeting of local first responders that happened to be taking place directly across the highway. It was the first time the group had met there. Even luckier, one of the local departments had just bought a new state-of-the art truck and brought it to show off to the group. When the plane hit there was a brand-new truck and 17 firefighters sitting across the street in the parking lot. They saw the crash and were there in two minutes, firing the hose onto the fireball before it could engulf everything and everyone. No telling how many lives they saved.

Freak stroke of luck. Probably saved a lot of lies. I drove by the place half an hour after the plane hit, and there were no visible flames and very little smoke. Under normal circumstances it would have taken fifteen minutes just to get there.

The man was no hero. My daughter's school is a few blocks from there, and he flew over my ex spouse's building maybe five seconds before crashing. There's also a daycare right next to that building. I won't hold the man's daughter accountable for what she says in her grief, but the media should be ashamed of itself for reporting it.

[LynneSin]

16. Her dad is a terrorist - that's what we call people who slam plans into buildings ON PURPOSE

I mean that's what we called those 19 people who flew planes into the World Trade Center.

How does this guy differ any from those 19 terrorists from 9/11?

Oh that's right - he's white, he's a 'christian' and he's supporting a right-wing cause

:grr:

[Bluerthanblue]

17. her father cared more about money than he did about her, or his

grandchildren.

He was a selfish, frustrated, stupid man. Her pretending otherwise might get her through the initial pain, but it shouldn't go unchallenged, and won't change the fact that he was NOT a "loving, caring, devoted father" or someone who truly cared about anyone but himself.

[kestrel91316]

18. He's a MURDERER, not a "hero". Is she related to our "Hannah Bell"?

[Cass]

19. Inappropriate?? The guy set his house on fire with his wife & daughter INSIDE it

before he crashed his plane into a building full of people. This man is not a hero and using the word "inappropriate" to describe his actions is ridiculous. The daughter needs to get a grip.

[951-Riverside]

23. I don't know why people keep spreading this disinformation. They were NOT inside.

But in recent weeks Mrs. Stack complained to her parents of an increasingly frightening anger in her husband, straining the marriage, Mr. Cook said. On Wednesday night, Mrs. Stack took her 12-year-old daughter, Margaux, to a hotel to get away from her husband.

They returned on Thursday morning to find their house ablaze, their belongings destroyed. Officials said the house fire was deliberately set, casting Mr. Stack as the primary suspect. But by that point he was gone, airborne.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/19/us/19crash.html?ref=us

[jobycom]

28. The original reports were that they were in the home.

It took a day for the media to work the facts out on that one, and not everyone heard the corrections.

Officials originally reported that the man's house was set on fire, and that the wife and daughter were being cared for by first responders at the site, so the assumption was that they had been in the house. There was a lot of confusion. There was also a lot of bad reporting. We were reading the man's suicide note online here while most of the media was still speculating on whether it was a crash, and before they had identified the pilot. Even before that Stack's mother-in-law was on the radio here in Austin on a call-in show identifying him as the pilot, the plane as his, and claiming he had set fire to the house. It took a long time before the media began reporting that. I knew people who had linked the pilot to the burning house through a simple tax roll search while the media was still trying to confirm it was his house. And of course they were still reporting that the plane was stolen long after it was confirmed that it was his. There were even local reporters advising people to stay home and away from tall buildings in case anyone else was stealing planes, long after the pilot was known and the cops were bomb-sniffing his car at the airport.

Reporters these days aren't geared towards investigation, they are geared towards reciting official statements.

[Cass]

30. Thanks, Jobycom, I never did hear the corrections.

The last I knew the wife and daughter were in the house.

[Tailormyst]

21. Her father is a murderer

I get that she loves him and she is his child, but anyone giving her airtime to call him a hero should be ashamed.

[WI_DEM]

22. She's as nuts as her father.

[Bluerthanblue]

24. "..now maybe people will listen.."- that peggs it as terrorism-

and her saying that- only encourages more of the same.

:shrug:

[Bluebear]

26. Kicked and recommended, This SHOULD get as much visibility as possible

Friggin' nutcases.

[Divine Discontent]

27. what a messed up person to call him a HERO, he's a murderer! She shouldn't applaud his actions, yet,

she does, and just said, oh, sorry to the family of the dead, but maybe someone will listen now - NO they won't listen to your murderous father DUMBASS.


Dude wasn't right, needed help obviously, and sounds like she may need to visit a psych for maybe how he raised her

[howard112211]

29. Give it a break people. She lost her father. It's pathetic that the media follows her around.

She is probably traumatized and saying all kinds of shit right now. Furthermore, the article doesn't even mention how old she is. If she is below the age of 20, this is no surprise at all.

[EFerrari]

32. Yep. n/t